Boss Micro BR-80 - Lack Of Community

Started by JolietJake, September 09, 2014, 03:59:31 AM

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JolietJake

I find it difficult to believe that there is so little forum interest in this great little unit. Not just here but elsewhere on the internet too.

If ever a device was asking for people to share comments and tips about it, it's this one.

Typical of Boss/Roland they release a product, have one or two firmware updates to fix any software bugs (and do no more) and then have absolutely nothing to do with the product any more.

Elantric

#1
QuoteI find it difficult to believe that there is so little forum interest in this great little unit. Not just here but elsewhere on the internet too.

If ever a device was asking for people to share comments and tips about it, it's this one.

Typical of Boss/Roland they release a product, have one or two firmware updates to fix any software bugs (and do no more) and then have absolutely nothing to do with the product any more.

Which product?

Micro BR 80 ?

JS-10 ?

JS-8 ?


The Micro BR 80 has my vote of the best of the above

JolietJake

#2
Oops my mistake. Yes I was referring to the Boss Micro BR-80.

gumtown

#3
Yes the BR-80 is very under-rated, much bang for your buck.
At the moment I use it for song rehearsal, while sitting down watching TV.

The A<>B loop is a great function to figure out some tricky parts.

My interest was perked with the arrival of the Raspberry Pi, tying the BR-80 USB midi through it,
which does work, but the BR-80 spec doesn't do patch change, only plays the internals drums via midi on channel 10 only.
Disappointing .....  :(
Free "GR-55 FloorBoard" editor software from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grfloorboard/

JolietJake

#4
I would really like an external drum sequencer application that would play the internal drums via USB midi for writing rhythm tracks. Once completed save the track as a SMF and transfer it to the BR-80.

I like the idea of importing a standard midi file as a drum track as midi files are readily available. However I was a bit disappointed that there are so few midi drum sounds available on the BR and many of the drum sounds simply don't play.

Overall it is a great unit with a lot of flexibility.

Elantric

#5
QuoteI would really like an external drum sequencer application that would play the internal drums via USB midi for writing rhythm tracks.


The BR-80 responds to external MIDI note data received via USB on  MIDI Channel 10

Download all Micro BR 80 docs here:
http://www.roland.com/support/article/?q=manuals&p=BR-80

Any MIDi Sequencer should do the trick
N-Track Studio is affordable
http://en.ntrack.com/index.php


JolietJake

Thanks for the reply's.

I know you can use a midi sequencer to do this, however this is not ideal for programming rhythm tracks such as can be done with a specialised rhythm sequencer and there are many GM drums that don't sound.

Anyway it's not the end of the world. I just wish Boss would release a specialised editor such as they do with the BR-800 rhythm editor.

gumtown

Plan B:
Record the drum tracks as a stereo audio track with your favourite software GM module, and load the drums into the BR-80 as an audio track.
Free "GR-55 FloorBoard" editor software from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grfloorboard/

JolietJake

Thanks Gumtown. That's probably the best plan.
If only Boss/Roland software was as professional as yours.
The applications supplied with the BR-80 look like something I would knock out using Visual Basic.


JolietJake

Rather annoyingly, the BR-800 Rhythm editor software actually works with the BR-80 in every way except when saving the data to the BR-80. You get a message stating "the BR 800 is not connected".

However in every other respect it does everything I want it to do. When connected via USB to the BR-80 you can play the midi drums direct on the BR-80 and sequence entire tracks.

If only it had an export to midi file function it would be ideal.

Or perhaps someone knows of a midi driver to capture data direct to a midi file similar to "print to PDF"?

Elantric

#10
Try MIDI-OX to capture real time midi messages between BR-800 Editor and BR-80  and use Text to MIDI save to a file as SMF.

MIDI-OX
http://www.midiox.com

Text to MIDI
http://www.midiox.com/app.htm#t2mf

Text To MIDI

A fellow from the Netherlands, Piet Van Oostrum, has created a pair of nifty file converters. One, MF2T, translates Standard MIDI Files into an editable ASCII text format; and the other, T2MF converts it back. MIDI-OX has been able to log its output to a text file for sometime, but we've added an option to log the data in a format compatible with the T2MF program.
When you enable logging in Text to MIDI format, the program zeros the timestamps on any open MIDI devices, creates a text file header, and then waits for the first MIDI event to arrive. After it does, recording begins and continues until logging is disabled ­ at which time the log adds trailer information. The output can be passed directly into the T2MF program.

JolietJake